Monday, December 30, 2013

Christopher Hart reviews the “wonderfully
entertaining” Daily Rituals: How Great
Minds Make Time, Find Inspiration, and Get to Work by Mason Currey in the Literary
Review. Quote unquote from V.S. Pritchett:

Sooner or later, the great men turn out to be all
alike. They never stop working. They never lose a minute. It is very
depressing.

Monday, December 23, 2013

Lloyd
Shepherd wonders in
the Literary Review whether pirating
books on the Internet is as bad as people like me and my colleagues at Copyright Licensing NZ
make out. Quote unquote:

Markets such as Russia remain a problem for
publishing. By some estimates, 95 per cent of e-book downloads in Russia are illegitimate.
But the big players in e-books – specifically Amazon – do not operate in Russia
and there is a paucity of legitimate titles available (perhaps only 60,000). […]
In such an environment, piracy becomes the convenient option, not the outlaw
one.All of
which raises an interesting question: if your book isn't being distributed in
Russia but is being merrily downloaded there, how should you feel? Before the
internet, such piracy (in physical formats) would have been invisible to you.
Now you know about it, what should you do? Should you even be (secretly, of
course) pleased?Neil
Gaiman, whose titles seem to make up a large proportion of all the books on
Library Genesis, has said that piracy in Russia has, in fact, increased his
sales there. In this light, there is only one thing worse than being pirated
and that is not being pirated, at least in those countries where you’re not
receiving much distribution anyway. […]And that itchier question remains: if you find a
copy of your book on a service such as Library Genesis, what do you do? Do you
hit the ‘takedown’ button in Muso and get it removed? Or do you ask yourself
whether it’s better to be read illegitimately than not to be read
at all? It is, at the very least, a question worth asking.

There
is a new edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses.
I have two already – what’s weird about that? – so am afraid I don’t
have room for this one, and not just because the entire novel has been hand-written
by Charlene Matthews onto
38 seven-foot tall, two-inch diameter poles. Quote
unquote:

Each pole has sixteen ‘cels’ comprised of four
pages, a total of sixty-four pages per pole. The first cel has the first
line in it and then Matthews measured down 9" and wrote that line in the
next cel and so on, with the last cel containing the last line on the
pole.

You
know it makes sense.

A.D.
Miller (here is
my diary of a weekend with him) in the Economist
on Nowheresville. Quote unquote:

Trowell
service station, slap in the middle of England on the M1 motorway, is not a
place many people would associate with intrigue or passion. For most people
motorway services are scarcely places at all, but blurred nowheres on the way
to somewhere else. Spend 24 hours here, however, and this bland yet strange
locale—a sort of amenity that almost everybody visits but hardly anybody
notices—emerges as a microcosm of modern Britain’s complexion and pathologies.
A day here reveals Trowell’s special rhythms and ecosystem, its microdramas and
eccentricities, murmured sadnesses and hopes.

Matt
Nolan again on that Avatar deal that
sees three sequels to a film I hope never to see being made here in New
Zealand. Quote unquote:

We may say “the government is doing it, because people feel good
having a movie shot here – it makes us proud!” Yeah sure, that is
relevant – so we need to think about it.Ok, so who are the people who get all this “pride” from the movies?
Generally, middle class New Zealanders. Who is paying, generally
wealthier New Zealanders (as they pay most of the tax). What spending is
likely to be sacrificed in order to pay for subsides, poor New Zealanders.
Directors law,
once again. If you don’t agree with how I’m conceptualising it, then why
don’t we get government to get private New Zealander’s to pay into a fund based
on the “pride” they get? You may complain that people will “free-ride”,
but then I would quickly point out that merely imposing a preference for
“pride” on everyone in order to get them to pay
for something you want is problematic!It is
inconsistent, nah hypocritical, to support this type of protectionism and then
complain about inequality and poverty in New Zealand. And yet, that is
what I see a bunch of people doing as they see it as “sexy” – and also because
they don’t actually know what the terms “poverty” and “inequality” mean.
If only more people thought clear, transparent public policy based
on the positive economics that allows it was sexy instead …

Finally,
a book. Distant Intimacy: a friendship in
the age of the internet, by Frederic Raphael and Joseph Epstein (Yale
University Press, 2013), in which two Jewish men of a certain age who have
never met, one English, one American, email each other to kvetch about life,
the literary world, politics, stuff like that. Wonderfully funny, often
suddenly poignant – they have grief to spare – and either of them is quotable
on any page. Here is Raphael being rude about Malcolm Gladwell, discussed
here recently):

I
call publications such as Outliers skipping-rope
books: they’re meant to give you a little gentle mental exercise, or the
illusion of having had a mental work-out, but raise no kind of a sweat.You
think you’re learning something because that kind of text almost always has
diagrams to make it look academic. The marketing persons always bulk them up
fatter than they need to be, rendering their prosthetic prose as void of
meaning or flavour as those jelly-fishy mammary inserts which raise a girl’s
alimony prospects along with men’s amorous propensities (Dr Johnson again, re
Garrick’s chorenes, I think).

And
here, later, is Epstein to Raphael, being rude about Saul Bellow:

At
the centre of Bellow’s fraudulence is his creating in his fictions figures
clearly intended to be he who are inevitably sensitive, kindly, sweet, not to
say great souled, whereas in so-called real life Bellow was touchy, unkind
nasty, and black-hearted: a prick, in other words, and a particularly
malevolent one. Bellow and my dear friend Edward Shilswere once close friends,
but had several fallings out. When Edward lay on his deathbed, Bellow asked if
he might come over to make things up. Edward told me that he didn’t want him to
come over, that he had no wish to make things easy for “that son of a bitch”.
After Edward died, Belllow put a character clearly meant to be Eward in his
last novel, Ravelstein, claiming that
he smelled (which Edward never did) and that he was homosexual (whch he most
distinctly wasn’t). Ah, me, why is it always raining in the Republic of
Letters?

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Keith
Richards in the Wall Street Journal –
where else? – on how
he wrote and, more important, recorded, “Street Fighting Man”. Quote
unquote:

Charlie
had this snap drum kit that was made in the 1930s. Jazz drummers used to carry
around the small kit to practice when they were on the bus or train. It had
this little spring-up hi-hat and a tambourine for a snare. It was perfect
because, like the acoustic guitar, it wouldn't overpower the recorder's mike. I
had Charlie sit right next to the mike with his little kit and I kneeled on the
floor next to him with my acoustic Gibson Hummingbird. There we were in front
of this little box hammering away [laughs]. After we listened to the playback,
the sound was perfect.

I
often joke that the only way to get published in Britain if you’re French is to
pretend you’re Spanish. If you’ve been a best-seller in France, it's a
sure-fire recipe for not getting a deal in the UK.

Peter
Simpson joins
me in praising Peter Bland, specifically
his Collected Poems. Quite right,
too. It’s a shame that the bulk of the Collected
has somewhat obscured this year’s new collection Breath Dances, which is Peter on top form.

Speaking
of poets, Vincent O’Sullivan, the current Poet Laureate – Pirate Laureate, I
believe a mokopuna calls him: I prefer to think of him as the Poet Lorikeet –
is blogging. Not a natural form for him, I imagine, but it is part of the job. Here is his first post. Quote
unquote:

The
obvious point of this site is to celebrate and present the breadth of
experience and formal variety that poetry embraces. I shall be inviting a guest
poet to contribute work of their own, and to select a poem by a living writer
they value, as well as a poem from an earlier era that continues to matter to
them.

So,
cunning as ever, he plans to outsource much of the writing to other poets, in
this case Jennifer Compton. The male as evader, obv, but a brilliant idea.

Want
more poets? Two for the price of one: here
is Paula Green on Elizabeth Smither’s new collection Ruby Duby Du. Quote unquote:

This
delightful book signals the burgeoning output of small presses –- handcrafted
books with smallish print runs, scope for new poets to emerge, and established
poets to publish miniature gems or take sidestepping risks. Elizabeth’s book,
published by Dunedin’s Cold Hub Press, is a gold nugget of a book and deserves
to be under the pillow of every new mother and father, and in the gift box of
every newborn child. It is an utter delight from curling fingertip to wriggling
toe.

So
I say this to food critics and bloggers (and I am a blogger myself) – do you
have what it takes to work 12 to 15 hours a day everyday on your feet in a room
that is 35 to 50 degrees? Or let me put it this way – try to write your
articles in a room with no air conditioning in the middle of the desert summer
and see how difficult it is.

Emmaa
Jacobs in the FT on home
libraries with some wonderful photos and some depressing text. Quote
unquote:

The
digital era has in some ways made book collections harder to justify. With so
many of us opting for ebooks over paperbacks, what is the point of keeping
books? Just as many decided to ditch their record collections for a digital
library, might the same happen to books?
Hilary
Mason, data scientist in residence at Accel Partners, believes it will. She
only acquires physical books that have sentimental attachment or are written by
friends. Anticipating emptier bookshelves, Ikea has introduced a deep version
of its “Billy” bookcase. The flat-pack furniture retailer believes more of us
will in future line our shelves with objects rather than books.
Rather
than replace books, the internet has created another space to portray our
bookish credentials. A number of websites, such as Bookshelf Porn, have sprung
up to showcase users’ book collections. Others, like Goodreads and Pinterest
display digital bookcases.

StatsChat’s Thomas Lumley defends
scientists against Auckland University’s arts faculty’s claim, which is not in
any way self-interested, that without heaps and heaps of more arts graduates we
could lose “an informed and thoughtful citizenry which understands the history
and cultures of a diverse nation and supports social and economic innovation
and international engagement”. Quote unquote:

[When
faced with this claim] we’d hope that someone with science training would ask
if there’s any empirical support for the idea that people with science degrees
are less informed and thoughtful, or less supportive of social and economic
innovation and international engagement. We’d also hope that they would have
some idea how empirical support or refutation could be generated if it wasn’t
available.

And
so, without the usual segue, here is the late Peter O’Toole on stage in Keith
Waterhouse’s play Jeffrey Bernard is
Unwell as Bernard, whom I almost met but was too frightened to, as
recounted here.

Friday, December 13, 2013

A team of physicists has provided some of the clearest evidence yet that our
Universe could be just one big projection.

In
1997, theoretical physicist Juan Maldacena proposed that an audacious
model of the Universe in which gravity arises from infinitesimally thin,
vibrating strings could be reinterpreted in terms of well-established physics.
The mathematically intricate world of strings, which exist in nine dimensions
of space plus one of time, would be merely a hologram: the real action would
play out in a simpler, flatter cosmos where there is no gravity.

Maldacena’s
idea thrilled physicists because it offered a way to put the popular but still
unproven theory of strings on solid footing — and because it solved apparent
inconsistencies between quantum physics and Einstein’s theory of gravity. It
provided physicists with a mathematical Rosetta stone, a ‘duality’, that
allowed them to translate back and forth between the two languages, and solve
problems in one model that seemed intractable in the other and vice versa. But
although the validity of Maldacena’s ideas has pretty much been taken for
granted ever since, a rigorous proof has been elusive.

In
two papers posted on the arXiv repository, Yoshifumi Hyakutake of Ibaraki
University in Japan and his colleagues now provide, if not an actual proof, at
least compelling evidence that Maldacena’s conjecture is true.

In
one paper, Hyakutake computes the internal energy of a black hole, the position
of its event horizon (the boundary between the black hole and the rest of the
Universe), its entropy and other properties based on the predictions of string
theory as well as the effects of so-called virtual particles that continuously
pop into and out of existence. In the other, he and his collaborators calculate
the internal energy of the corresponding lower-dimensional cosmos with no
gravity. The two computer calculations match.

The
executive summary: life is a hologram and nothing is real. So here are the
Beatles with “Strawberry Field Forever”, in which John Lennon spookily predicts
the new non-reality of reality. Because you are worth it, this is Take 7, not
the version as released on the B-side of “Penny Lane”:

Thursday, December 12, 2013

English
comedian Andrew Watts writes
in the Spectator about playing Santa
and difficult it is in a large shopping centre in a multi-cultural area when
there are two of you, plus elfs:

Father
Christmas must never make assumptions: we shouldn’t ask about Mummy or Daddy
when a child might have just a Mummy, no Mummy, or two Mummies; likewise, we
shouldn’t try to guess the identity of any accompanying adult. ‘There’s no
place for prejudice in a grotto situation,’ we are told. ‘Everyone is treated
the same.’

And
no one gets special treatment either — we are to act just the same if a
celebrity visits Father Christmas. My fellow Santa’s top grotto moment was
meeting Suzi Quatro; she sat herself on his knee, wriggled, and asked him
whether it was true he only came once a year.

And
then this:

The
shopping centre to which I’m assigned is in north London, and favoured by
Jewish women. The busiest time is Friday afternoons, when schools finish early
for the Sabbath and boys in yarmulkes visit the grotto. (Everyone visits Santa:
women in burkas bring their children too.) They are delighted if I remember to
say ‘Shabbat Shalom’: I am a philosemitic Santa.

It
is conceivable to be an anti-Semitic Santa: my father grew up near where Sir
Oswald Mosley lived, and every year he would, very properly, invite the
children from the village to the big house for a Christmas party. Mosley
himself would dress as Father Christmas, but — for this was before the
Coca-Cola corporation standardised red livery — his fur-trimmed suit was black.

YouTube
doesn’t have a clip of Mosley as Santa, sadly, but here is Suzi Quatro in 1973
with “Can the Can”:

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

To
mark 11.12.13, here is the wonderful Marti
Friedlander in today’s issue of the Herald:

Anti-apartheid voice

I cannot comprehend why John Minto feels he should be part of the New Zealand
delegation at Nelson Mandela’s funeral.

Many
of us had been protesting against apartheid for years before the 1981 protests.
I remember, particularly, that first protest I attended in New Zealand at Myers
Park in 1960. It was a very moving and heartfelt one.

The
exceptional lawyer Frank Haigh articulated our mutual concern. Such protests
continued for years around New Zealand, and Hart and Care reallied people
together in unity for this cause.

Mr
Minto should stop believing he gave voice to our anti-apartheid movement in New
Zealand.

In
other Minto-related news, BK
Drinkwater tweets about the online fuss about the government not
inviting Minto and/or Trevor Richards to what’s basically a state funeral with
world leaders. I was interested in BK’s view because he is far too young to
remember 1981, so is unsentimental about it. I lived in Auckland then, went on
every protest march, drove down to Hamilton for the game there – fortunately I arrived
a couple of minutes too late to get on the field: it was frightening enough
outside – and at the Eden Park game got whacked by a cop from, I think, the
Blue Squad. And, like Marti, I had been an anti-apartheid protester long before
1981. So I was present and engaged, but am unsentimental about it. Anyway here
is BK with a bunch of tweets about what he sees on Twitter:

Dear
people my age and younger: it is moral complacency, not moral sensitivity, to
assume you would have been anti-tour had you been alive.

I’m
seeing a lot of talk about 1980s new zealand and not much about apartheid south
africa.

1. I
am sympathetic to the people seeking to use Mandela’s death as an opportunity
to relive the discord of their New Zealand youth...
2.
it must be nice to look back and feel that you once meant something and were a
part of something more important than yourself...
3.
It is a pity that these people’s lives have clearly not since meant anything or
been part of anything but more important than themselves.
4.
So out of pity, I’m prepared to let them feel alive again, even if their way of
doing this involves...
5.
appropriating a dead man’s struggle for their petty partisan ends. But I won’t
engage.

So
here is a snippet of Neil Young on 21 March 2013 in Auckland with “Danger Bird”
from his 1975 album Zuma. Frank
Sampedro’s good, isn’t he:

Monday, December 9, 2013

Beyond
the All Blacks being unbeaten for a whole season, and Emirates Team New Zealand
coming second in a two-boat race, what put New Zealand on the world’s front
pages in 2013 was a novel, a song and a film.

Saturday, December 7, 2013

Sport,
the sportingly named literary magazine that began in 1988 as a biannual but for
the last decade has been an annual, has lost its funding from Creative New
Zealand. Its editor, VUP’s Fergus Barrowman, will be on National Radio at
2.35pm tomorrow (Sunday) to talk about what this means – as far as one can
tell, it’s the end.

I
hope not. Sport introduced me to
Ashleigh Young, Tina Makereti and many other terrific writers, alongside new
work from more established names such as Andrew Johnston, Bill Manhire, Kate
Camp, Bernadette Hall, Elizabeth Smither and Vincent O’Sullivan. It has always
been a good mix with great quality control. (Apart from the time it published
me.)

But
now it is endangered. There has been coverage about it on Stuff here
and here,
and a Twitterstorm – Fergus is good with old and new media, and also the
magazine is held in great affection and regard.

Creative
NZ has been subsidising Sport for 25
years so it came as a surprise that this latest application for funding was
declined. The money involved isn’t much in the scheme of things – $5000, tiny
compared to what dance and theatre companies get, let alone literary festivals.
Nothing at the magazine seems to have changed: the quality is as high as ever,
Fergus still takes no money from it, the writers still get paid. Not much, $15
a page I believe, but it’s something.

Actually,
it’s more than something – it’s a lot. For a poet or short-story writer, being
published anywhere is a big deal, and being paid even a token amount is hugely
validating, for want of a better word. It’s a confidence-booster, and the fact
of publication also helps when talking to mainstream publishers – or, I
suppose, when trying to promote your self-published e-book. Publication in a
magazine run by a serious editor carries a lot more weight than publication in
an e-zine.

So,
what went wrong? I have no inside information but I have been involved in
similar decisions in the past because I was on the funding panel for 15 years
off and on. Which I’m not allowed to talk about, Chatham House rules, etc. But
the hell with that. Here goes.

I
have no idea about Sport’s sales and
costs, but I saw the budgets for other literary magazines. It amazed me what
they spent and how little they earned. One journal spent $20,000 an issue but
sold only 275 copies (80 copies retail – yes, 80 copies in bookshops throughout
New Zealand). That made a unit cost of $73 (I am rounding these figures heavily
to obscure the title in question) – and I could see from other grant
applications that a novel might have production costs of $12,000 and a print
run of at least 3000, expecting to sell 2000 copies. To put it another way,
annual production costs of that magazine were about the same as for seven medium-size
novels. And from memory $3500 is a standard subsidy for a literary novel, so
$5000 isn’t out of line for an issue of Sport,
which at 288 pages or so has been bulkier than most novels. And better-written.

On
the other hand. . . I know people who make a strong argument for no funding of
the arts. They say, if you want to consume it, pay for it yourself: why should taxpayers
in Taumarunui subsidise seats at the ballet or opera for rich people in
Wadestown? There are holes in that argument (one is called Lotto) but it is
possible to make a coherent case against subsidising literature and the arts
that the literary luvvies™ need to answer.

Almost
no one in the arts/literary world thinks about opportunity costs – that is, if
we fund Project X, we can’t fund Projects Y and Z, or possibly even A, B or C. This
may be a factor in Creative NZ’s decision – that there could be bigger bangs
for the 5000 bucks that might have gone to Sport.
Without knowing the numbers, it’s impossible to judge and the people at
Creative NZ are infuriatingly discreet. If Sport
was selling only 50 copies, fine – but I think we should be told. Is there a
journalist out there who can dig this out?

On
the third hand. . . I can’t remember the numbers exactly but Quote Unquote usually got a grant from
Creative NZ and every year we paid out to contributors, almost all of whom were
authors, more than 10 times what we received in the grant. So there can be a
multiplier effect with these grants. And, as above, there is a confidence boost
to any writer, not just the beginners, when they are published in a magazine
that is actually read.

I
can’t see a commercial sponsor taking Sport
on – but I have every confidence that it will survive. It’s too good not to.

So
here are Godley & Creme with “This Sporting Life” from their 1978 album L:

UPDATE
Kyle Mewburn, president of the NZ Society of Authors, comments on Facebook:

Literature is, sadly (and rather short-sightedly, if you consider the wider social impacts), at the bottom of the CNZ priority list. It receives less funding than interpretive dance. The rapid growth in the number of “literary practitioners” over the last decade (which, I’d suggest, has been far greater than in any other cultural sector) has not been matched by any substantial increase in funding, rather the reverse. There is also no broader, long-term strategic planning – it’s simply a narrow box-ticking exercise exacerbated by the fact the boxes have more to do with cultural pretentions than literatrure, and nothing whatsoever to do with underpinning a vibrant literary scene. So ad hoc decisions/choices are made and the icing spread ever thinner.

Friday, December 6, 2013

That frame around her is totally Francis Bacon crossed with
Bill Culbert. Television set designers were artier then.

The B-side of Springfield’s 1970 single “How Can I Be Sure”
is a cover of the 1968 Classics IV hit “Spooky”. That band re-recorded it in in 1979 as the Atlanta Rhythm Section, whom no
one remembers now but were really good even by the standards of 1970s Southern
bands.

Classics IV did it in F minor, thereby terrifying
the guitarist; Dusty did it in A minor. Played double-time, it is pretty much
“The Carlos Santana Secret Chord Progression”, which Frank Zappa played in G
minor. This version, one of many, is from Shut Up ’ N Play Yer Guitar and recorded in 1980 with Vinnie
Colaiuta on drums. The piece is basically a duet for electric guitar and drums,
so the versions with Chad Wackerman are, like, OMG awesome.

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

I
am fond of St George’s at Gate Pa, aka Pukehinahina, because that was my
childhood church where I was baptised and confirmed and it was lovely in the classic
Anglican style (it isn’t
now). I am fond too of Christ
Church in Russell, the oldest church in New Zealand, which is
even more austere than St George’s used to be and still has bullet holes from
the unpleasant events at Kororareka in 1845.

Salisbury
Cathedal, whose construction is recounted in William Golding’s The Spire, is another favourite. (The Spire is the best novel about
architecture, ever. Yes, even better than that one by Ayn Rand.) Gloucester
Cathedral has its good points, as do St Paul’s, the Duomo in Florence and the cathedral
in Siena which has one of the great floors. In France, Notre Dame is creepy and
Sacre-Coeur is vulgar. I haven’t seen Chartres or York Minster – last time I
was in York was just after the bishop
had declared that he didn’t believe in the resurrection and three days later a
lighting strike destroyed the south transept so the building was closed for
repairs. God is not mocked, even in Yorkshire.

But
of the churches I have seen, St James’s in Picadilly
is the best. It’s in a nice part of town, there is a decent bookshop around the
corner, there are good shirt-shops next-door in Jermyn Street. Even
better, William Blake was baptised there. Font memories! But the main thing about
the church is the interior. It is lovely, and has carvings by Grinling
Gibbons.

The last time Neil Finn made a solo
album was in 2001, when he released 7 Worlds
Collide, but at last he has completed another one. Dizzy Heights will be released in
February, and Finn has been warming up with some low-key dates, premiering his
new songs accompanied by a small string orchestra.
The recorded pieces are intricate
mosaics of tones and textures coloured with hints of Minimalism and electronica,
occasionally reminiscent of Finn’s buddies Radiohead. In these live
performances (with string arrangements by Victoria Kelly, who also contributed
keyboards and backing vocals), the approach was more organic, focusing on the
melodic essentials, with Finn’s voice squarely in the middle.
He isn’t one of the great rock’n’roll
bawlers or a flashy vocal technician, but he sings with an unforced
expressiveness which perfectly matches the wistful qualities of his songs. In
My Blood, for instance, exuded a lingering air of nostalgia and regret, while
Recluse was a meditation on the perils of isolation and of mistaking the
internet for real life (“it’s people that you lose when you become a recluse”).